November 2009

The Original Three
Been Dealt a Losing Hand
(Empty Records, 2005)

The guit player/singer of this three piece punk outfit hails from The Black Lips. That carries a lot of baggage. Side projects don’t always come off as well as they should; like The Damn Yankees or any solo Mick Jagger or Keith Richards album. Been Dealt a Losing Hand, despite its rather lame title, delivers where other side projects have failed miserably in the past. The guitar duo and drummer are even joined by Jay Reatard and Alicia Trout, who produces three tracks, from The Lost Sounds. The star power (that term is being applied liberally) alone promises a set of good tracks. It really comes through. Unfortunately, since Empty Records was been rather busy, they didn’t have any time to check the grammar on the track “It’s Not What Your Thinking.” I understand this is punk, but that doesn’t say what band actually means. Poor grammar, though, can’t really detract from “The Line,” where our friend from The Black Lips makes good use of his voice and a plain melody. Between that track and “Vow,” the last track on the album, The Original Three reach almost anthemic proportions, but the album is only nine tracks. As a listener and not a critic, I want more. And probably, as a result of this album, I’m willing to pay cash money to see The Black Lips the next time they’re in town.

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Yes, the Punks is a crappy name for a band despite the fact that this Detroit group cropped up during the early part of the ‘70s prior to the term’s being spread out all over the place. Comprised of singer Frantic, Al Webber on guitar, Craigston J. Webshire III behind the drums, Rod McMahon on bass and Steve Rocky playing lead guitar, the Punks were admittedly worshipping at the alter of Detroit rock stuffs. It’s pretty obvious – as is the Stooges connection, not just musically, but in Frantic’s singing.

Getting together in ’73 or so, the band plugged the gap between the MC5 and the Stooges who were newly demised and what would happen in New York pretty soon. No other band distilled the ‘60s stuff that came out of the Motor City as well as these folks.

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Defining hardcore and differentiating it from punk is almost a completely impossible endeavor. While the Zero Boys are unquestionably a good band, it seems to me that the Exploited were more of a hardcore group than the Indiana natives. That’s not to say that I appreciate one band over the other, but genre names result in this kind of stultifying mess. And with that being said, Chicago’s Articles of Faith come across as at best a deft mix of some nascent hardcore thing and aggressive, early ‘80s punk, not too different from the Zero Boys or even early Screeching Weasel (seriously, listen to “American Suicide” or “More Problems” and continue referring to the group as pop-punk).

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